Quick Setup — Key to excellent on-boarding
Recently, I read an excellent post by Samuel Hulick — User onboarding isn’t a feature that emphasises on the fact that the onboarding process should be an excellent experience for your customer as it’s their first experience with your product and how it makes a lasting impression on them.
When your customer signs up for your product, it is important they are not left in the dark. It is important that assistance in the form of text or visual information is provided. Onboarding captures everything starting from Sign Up, Basic setup, Empty state, Creating the first transaction, In-app support.
But, you need to be cautious as to what needs to be incorporated as part of your user onboarding. If it’s confusing or overwhelming, chances are that it doesn’t convey the true potential of your product. With a great onboarding experience, you can win yourself a customer for life.
Can it be totally ditched?
One of the first things you’ll probably need to ask yourself is — Do we really need a quick setup?
Well, that depends. You can avoid the basic setup for applications like Personal email, Social Networking sites. However, for complex tools like CRM, People Management tools or an accounting software, setting up the account at first is something that is indispensable.
You would ask why?
To answer it best, take the case of an accounting software, for instance. These applications are customised based on the customer’s location and industry. The taxes, currency and even the date format, are based on the user’s geographic location. Although it’s possible to fetch data and auto-populate it from the IP address, it’s important to let the customer validate it.
Customer engagement is thinking and acting as customers do: as a series of inter-related interactions that, together, create their ‘customer experience’.
— Craig McCulloch
Consolidated setup or Setup at Module Level. Which one works best?
The answer to that could be either. If you’re sticking to the basic setup at module level, chances are that you’re going to throw a pop up, each and every time the customer clicks on a module. The advantage of doing it all, as one single quick setup, is that you can capture all the information in one go. Plus, if your product is a bit comprehensive, you are giving a chance for the customer to get a sneak peek into the various features of the product.
People don’t need a drill, they need holes
— Theodore Levitt
This does come along with a few gripes, though.
Users might be eager to try the product and would probably hit the ‘Skip’ button as soon as possible. Sometimes, questions asked in the quick setup might sound strange to the user as in the case of a new business owner, who may not necessarily know the taxes applicable for his business. He might need his accountant’s help. Also, the classic case is that users might find it long and uninteresting which can stamp a disastrous first impression.
The Onboarding process needs constant changes and it all depends on what works and what doesn’t. Let’s take the case of my accounting system for example.
For the past few months, we’ve been experimenting with the quick setup in Zoho Books and trying to understand the workflows that best suit our audience. This is what we did.
1. Captured the right edition (Global, US Edition & UK Edition) right in the beginning. It’s confusing for some customers, as some might end up thinking that localised versions offer less features when compared to the global version, albeit wrongly.
2. Enabled modules based on requirement: Nobody wants a bloated screen cluttered with unnecessary modules. Based on the size of the organisation, type and goals, users can choose only those modules they require.
3. Got the taxes right: Every transaction invariably has a tax component and instead of asking the user to do it later, we thought it would be best to ask them this, in the beginning.
4. Connect to Payment Gateways: While not every business accepts online payments, majority of our customers do. We wanted to showcase this ability, so that businesses can consider the idea of online payments and automate their entire payment collection process.
The trial and error experiment did lead to some interesting conclusions.
1. Give a feeling of progress: By providing a step by step approach we were able to let users know they have completed stages and are nearing the end.
2. Option to leave anytime: We believe in giving users the power to use the system the way they want. The ‘Skip’ option is prominently visible for them to exit the onboarding process anytime they want.
3. Avoid clutter: Too many options will clutter the screen and hide what’s relevant. So, give an option to the users to have what they want on their screen. It gets easier to search for and perform primary actions with less number of modules on the screen.
There’s no right (or wrong) way of providing onboarding experience. It’s a never-ending process that keeps changing with time. It requires continuous observation and pruning while constantly adapting it to customer likes and dislikes.
